Feminist Peacebuilding in Southeast Asia: Beyond the WPS Agenda

Introduction: Peacebuilding, UN Women’s Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, and local movements in Southeast Asia

Feminist peacebuilding has emerged as one of the most important shifts in global peace and security thinking over the past two decades, as it reframes the focus from seeing women as victims of conflict to recognizing them as active and effective agents in shaping peace and peacebuilding[1]. The United Nations Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda, established through Security Council Resolution 1325 in 2000 and expanded by subsequent resolutions, calls for women’s full, equal, and meaningful participation in peace processes, the protection of women and girls from conflict-related violence, and the integration of gender perspectives across all aspects of peace and security policy[2]. UN Women, the UN body dedicated to gender equality, has reinforced these principles through global advocacy, emphasizing that peace cannot be sustainable if it ignores the everyday insecurities and structural inequalities faced by women and marginalized groups[3]. In this framing, feminist peacebuilding is not simply about adding women to negotiations; it is about transforming peace and security from a system rooted in militarization and exclusion into one centered on justice, dignity, and inclusion.

While the WPS framework has provided vital political momentum and international legitimacy, it has also been criticized for its limitations. Scholars and activists point out that the agenda is often applied in a top-down, state-centric, and securitized manner, sometimes instrumentalizing women’s roles in service of counterterrorism or stabilization strategies rather than empowering them as agents of transformative change[4]. There is also a risk that global frameworks reproduce Western narratives of women in the Majority World as victims in need of rescue, overshadowing the agency, creativity, and resilience of local feminist actors[5]. These critiques have resonated strongly in Southeast Asia, where feminist movements navigate complex terrains shaped by authoritarian politics, deeply entrenched patriarchy, and the legacies of colonialism[6].

In this context, feminist peacebuilding in Southeast Asia cannot be understood only through the lens of the WPS resolutions. As Sharon Bong observes, feminism in Southeast Asia is often a “politically strategic choice[7]”, or a means of advancing empowerment that resists fixed Western definitions and adapts instead to local histories, cultures, and struggles. For examples, in Mindanao, Philippines, women have played central roles in brokering peace within conflict-affected communities[8]; in Myanmar, women have redefined peace as more than the absence of war, insisting on accountability and justice in the face of military violence[9]; and in Thailand’s three Southern Border Provinces (SBP) and neighboring parts of Songkhla Province, women’s organizations have mobilized across ethnic and religious divides to sustain interfaith dialogue[10]. These cases, which this article will examine in greater depth, highlight a distinctly local approach that resists externally imposed models, foregrounds intersectionality, and draws on culturally and politically resonant framings that sometimes even avoid the label “feminist” altogether. What unites these “feminist” movements is the principle that sustainable peace must be rooted in the lived experiences of women and people in their communities[11].

Moreover, feminist peacebuilding in the region also underscores that peace cannot be reduced to the symbolic inclusion of women in elite negotiations. To be meaningful, feminist peacebuilding must dismantle the structural inequalities, be it patriarchy, authoritarianism, land dispossession, and economic marginalization, that fuel conflict in the first place[12]. In this context, the WPS agenda functions as both a well-understood global framework as well as a site of contestation. It offers Southeast Asian feminists leverage in policy spaces and access to international resources, but it is also a site where meanings need to be continually reinterpreted and reexamined to avoid reinforcing existing hierarchies of power. This dynamic tension between institutional frameworks and decolonial feminist praxis shapes the landscape of feminist peacebuilding in the region today.

Country Cases

The Philippines: Feminist Peacebuilding in Practice

The Philippines has become an outstanding example in Southeast Asia for feminist peacebuilding, particularly through the integration of women into peace processes in Mindanao, a region long marked by armed conflict between the Philippine government, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), and other armed groups[13]. Women were integrated into formal negotiations between the Government and the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), culminating in the 2014 Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro; notably, Miriam Coronel-Ferrer chaired the government panel and became the first woman in the world to sign a major peace accord with a non-state armed group[14]. 

Women’s organizations, notably the Mindanao Commission on Women (MCW) which consisted of Muslim, Christian, and Lumad leaders, played an instrumental role in shaping dialogue across religious and ethnic divides through its annual congress holding to hear all voices and amplify these voices to the public and the authorities[15]. The MCW, launched in 2001, pioneered “the Mothers for Peace” campaign, which mobilized women at the community level to reject violence and demand inclusion in negotiations[16].

Women were also directly engaged in the Comprehensive Agreement on the Bangsamoro (2014) and subsequent governance structures of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM). Their roles included not only participation in official delegations but also grassroots mediation, community consultations, and advocacy to ensure that women’s voices were reflected in transitional governance. Studies have shown that women’s contributions in both formal and informal channels were critical in building trust between parties and securing broader community legitimacy for the peace process[17].

At the community level, feminist peacebuilding has taken culturally resonant forms. Women leaders in Mindanao have used storytelling as a tool for reconciliation, allowing displaced persons and conflict survivors to articulate trauma and reframe shared experiences in ways that facilitate healing. One such initiative, Enlightening the Younger Generation, collected stories from war veterans and their daughters to highlight the roles played by Bangsamoro women. This narrative fosters a “fruitful inter-generational exchange” that both honored the contributions of female commanders and reflected the aspirations of younger peers for peaceful activism[18]. These approaches demonstrate how feminist peacebuilding in the Philippines has extended beyond elite-level negotiations to reshape everyday social relations fractured by conflict[19].

Despite these achievements, feminist peacebuilding in the Philippines has also faced structural limitations. Participation in high-level peace negotiations often skewed toward women from elite families or those with strong political connections, leaving grassroots women underrepresented[20]. As Kubota and Nakatani note, the celebrated success of women’s involvement in Mindanao “was largely restricted to affluent women from elite families or clans with close political or social ties. [21]” This dynamic reflects broader tensions in the WPS framework: inclusion is achieved, but often through channels that reproduce existing hierarchies rather than disrupt them.

Nevertheless, the Philippine experience illustrates the transformative potential of feminist peacebuilding. By embedding gender perspectives into both peace agreements and community reconciliation, women’s movements have not only advanced the WPS agenda but also expanded it, showing that peace is not merely the absence of conflict but the rebuilding of trust, dignity, and social cohesion. The challenge moving forward is to deepen these gains by ensuring that grassroots women, especially those most affected by violence and displacement, are not just participants but co-authors of peace in the Philippines.

Myanmar: Feminist Peacebuilding under Militarization

In Myanmar, feminist peacebuilding takes place in the shadow of militarization and protracted conflict. The most recent example is during the 2021 military coup, where the militarization transformed women from participants in civil society into frontline actors in a nationwide struggle for democracy[22]. Their tactics combined political resistance with cultural subversion: the htamein protests, where women strung sarongs across streets to block soldiers, symbolized both defiance of patriarchal norms and a demand for justice in the face of state violence[23].

Women’s organizations have also been pivotal in peacebuilding through accountability and memory work. Groups such as the Women’s League of Burma and Progressive Voice document the military’s systematic use of sexual and gender-based violence as a weapon of war, ensuring that survivors’ voices remain central to international calls for justice[24]. This form of feminist peacebuilding redefines peace as more than the cessation of conflict, rather it is a struggle against impunity and a commitment on truth-telling as the basis for reconciliation[25].

At the community level, women’s networks in ethnic minority regions engage in everyday peace practices: mediating local disputes[26], organizing humanitarian assistance, and maintaining cross-border solidarity with displaced populations[27]. These activities sustain fragile forms of coexistence where formal negotiations remain blocked by the junta. Organizations such as the Women’s Peace Network also continue to articulate visions of federalism and minority rights by publishing statements and reports and providing various justice programs, seeking to embed women’s perspectives in any future peace settlement despite severe repression[28].

Peacebuilding in Myanmar thus exemplifies the decolonial character of feminist praxis in Southeast Asia. It rejects externally imposed “peace tables” that exclude women, instead prioritizing grassroots survival, justice for survivors, and political resistance to authoritarianism. In the absence of a viable national peace process, women sustain peacebuilding as a daily practice of resilience and accountability, keeping open the possibility of a more just and inclusive future.

Thailand: Feminist Peacebuilding in the three Southern Border Provinces (SBP) and neighboring parts of Songkhla Province

In Thailand, the most sustained expressions of feminist peacebuilding are found in the country’s three Southern Border Provinces (SBP) and neighboring parts of Songkhla Province, a region marked by decades of violent conflicts between insurgents and Thai security forces. In these conflicted areas, women’s organizations and groups have carved out critical spaces for reconciliation in a context where formal negotiations have often stalled or excluded grassroots voices[29], and have mobilized women across ethnic and religious divides to facilitate dialogue, support survivors of violence, and advocate for women’s participation in peace processes.

These efforts have highlighted how women experience conflict differently. They transcend beyond the framing of victims of violence, but they are seen as caregivers, mediators, and community leaders[30]. Local women have acted as bridge-builders, using cultural and religious resources, for instance a football league initiated by a university lecturer aiming to build peace in divided communities, to sustain trust across Buddhist and Muslim communities[31], while pushing back against narratives that cast the SBP solely through the lens of insurgency and counterinsurgency.

One concrete example is the Network of Civic Women for Peace’s Democratic Peace Dialogues in the southern border provinces, where Buddhist and Muslim women convene to share testimonies, mediate local tensions, and co-design community-level safety and youth engagement activities[32]. These dialogues, along with other women-led initiatives in the SBP, have helped build trust across communities and create practical collaboration beyond formal talks[33]. Such initiatives exemplify how feminist peacebuilding redefines security by centering healing, trust, and coexistence over the on-going conflict or persisting violence or persisting conflict.

By creating safe spaces for interfaith dialogue, women’s groups reframe peace as coexistence grounded in justice and inclusion, rather than as the simple silencing of conflict. The contribution of women in the SBP underscores the decolonial character of feminist peacebuilding in Thailand. Instead of relying on externally imposed frameworks, local activists root their work in community realities: addressing everyday insecurities, advocating for justice in cases of state violence, and ensuring that women’s voices are present in local decision-making. Their peacebuilding praxis demonstrates that lasting peace in the SBP comes from the empowerment of communities who sustain dialogue, healing, and resilience amid protracted conflict.

Challenges and Limitations

Despite their resilience and creativity, feminist peacebuilding movements in Southeast Asia operate within a landscape defined by formidable constraints.

Firstly, state repression, censorship, and co-optation remain constant threats. In Myanmar, activists have been facing arrest, harassment, or exile for documenting sexual violence by the military or advocating for federalism and minority rights[34]. Even in less openly repressive contexts, governments may attempt to co-opt feminist agendas: in Malaysia, for example, women’s empowerment is sometimes subsumed under state-sponsored Islamization, limiting the ability of feminist actors to challenge deeper structural inequalities[35]. These dynamics create a paradox: women are often invited to peace and security dialogues but only on terms set by the state, restricting their ability to push for systemic change.

Secondly, according to our interviews with NGOs and activists, funding inequities further exacerbate these challenges. Large, professionalized NGOs in capital cities are often able to meet international donor requirements and secure multi-year grants. By contrast, rural or grassroots groups often operate on volunteer labor with minimal financial support, despite being closest to communities most affected by conflict and poverty. Language barriers also intensify this divide: English-speaking organizations dominate the feminist dialogues, including the area of peacebuilding, while smaller groups working in local languages remain marginalized.

Finally, there is the risk of dependency on international frameworks and donor-driven programming. The WPS agenda has provided vital leverage, but it can also narrow local initiatives into pre-defined categories. In the Philippines, for example, women’s participation in the Mindanao peace process was celebrated globally as a WPS success story, yet critics note that inclusion was often limited to women from elite families [36], sidelining grassroots and indigenous women. In many other countries across Southeast Asia, according to interviews with development practitioners, donor-driven priorities have sometimes emphasized on narrow, project-based activities such as workshops or quantifiable outputs that might not be reflective of felt needs of those involved in the conflict[37]. This reflects a broader tension: while WPS opens political space, it can inadvertently reinforce hierarchies if not adapted to local contexts.

Taken together, these challenges reveal that feminist peacebuilding in Southeast Asia is not a straightforward story of progress. It is an ongoing negotiation against external pressures and internal limitations. Addressing these challenges requires not only resources but also a commitment to decolonial, intersectional, and grassroots approaches that center the voices of those most marginalized by conflict, rather than reproducing the hierarchies that feminist peacebuilding seeks to dismantle.

Conclusion: Toward a Southeast Asian Feminist Peacebuilding Agenda

Feminist peacebuilding in Southeast Asia demonstrates that peace cannot be imported or reduced to ceasefires or elite negotiations; it must address the deeper inequalities of patriarchy, authoritarianism, land dispossession, and economic marginalization. While the United Nations Women, Peace and Security (WPS) agenda has opened important space for women’s participation, local activists insist that genuine transformation requires moving beyond token inclusion toward structural change. In their practice, peace is inseparable from land rights, environmental justice, bodily autonomy, collective care, and democratic participation.

Central to this vision is the leadership of grassroots women, indigenous communities, and LGBTQ+ activists, who are often the most effective mediators yet remain the least visible in formal processes. Supporting these groups requires direct funding, capacity-building, and language justice so that participation is not monopolized by larger, urban NGOs. It also demands resisting the co-optation of feminist agendas into state security frameworks and donor programs that prioritize numbers over meaningful influence. Diversified funding and accountability mechanisms are necessary to ensure women do not just sit at the table but help set the agenda.

The future of feminist peacebuilding in Southeast Asia lies in building solidarity across borders and centering those most affected by conflict and exclusion. By shifting from tokenism to transformation and from donor dependency to grassroots resilience, the region’s feminists are already modeling a decolonial approach to peace. Their efforts show that lasting peace must be measured not only by stability but by justice, dignity, and the everyday security of communities.

Disclaimer by the authors

This written piece is a part of the web dossier SEA Through Feminism, a podcast and written piece series where we investigate feminist movements in Southeast Asia. The team employs a feminist postcolonial approach to examine the diverse identities and experiences of feminist, LGBTQI+, and women's movements in Southeast Asia. By recognizing the intersectionality of gender, class, culture, and religion, we aim to avoid imposing a singular definition of feminism onto these diverse struggles. While there are many definitions of feminist movements in literature, the research team defines feminist movement as any social movement with (1) a gender component, and (2) the rights of the body. The research team also recognizes that not all organizations use or prefer to use the term ‘feminism’ with their activism, thus, the feminist movement in this paper’s context only refers to the research team’s interpretation as mentioned.

It is important to note that the research team is Thai and is based in Thailand. The team acknowledges that we do not represent Southeast Asian voices, nor do we possess the political power to represent one movement over another. Our researchers value all knowledge and activism as equal, therefore seeing the pluralization of differences.

Another limitation of this research is the politics of translation. As Spivak wrote, the act of translating is often a political exercise (Spivak, 2012). While the team has tried to conduct interviews in local languages with a local translator as possible, we also present the research in English. Additionally, there were interviews and desk research that we had conducted in English.

There will be knowledge, sentiments, and consciousness negotiated by our translation, under the limitation of the English language and the Western knowledge system. In order to reclaim this discursive space, our choices of terminology used for each country were informed by local or national usage.

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Femnimitr is a collective of passionate, data-driven people consisting of development practitioners and independent researchers across the Majority World. Over the past five years, in addition to operating the Gender Knowledge Hub, Femnimitr has worked with policymakers, development practitioners, and feminist activists to produce research with robust, intersectional gender data across Southeast Asia.

Disclaimer: This published work was prepared with the support of the Heinrich Böll Stiftung. The views and analysis contained in the work are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the foundation. The author is responsible for any liability claims against copyright breaches of graphics, photograph, images, audio, and text used. 

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